Research Catalog

Title

A looking-glass for ladies : American Protestant women and the Orient in the nineteenth century / by Lisa Joy Pruitt.

Author

Pruitt, Lisa Joy, 1964-

Publication

Macon, Ga. : Mercer University Press, [2005], ©2005.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

247 pages : illustrations; 23 cm

Summary

"Lisa Joy Pruitt offers a new look at women's involvement in the mission movement, with a welcome focus on the often overlooked antebellum era. Most scholars have argued that the emergence of women as a dominant fore in American Protestant missions in the late nineteenth century was an outgrowth of nascent feminist activism in the various denominations. This new contribution suggests that the feminization of the later mission movement actually stemmed in large part from images of the "degraded Oriental woman" that popular evangelical literature had been circulating since the 1790s and that the increasing focus on and involvement of women was supported by male denominational leaders as an important strategy for reaching the world with the Christian gospel."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

• Missions > Orient
• Women missionaries > United States

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [223]-243) and index.

Contents

Introduction : "a looking-glass for ladies" -- 1. "The widow's mite" : organizing missionary societies -- 2. "Sanctifying afflictions" : 19th century missionary women's memoirs -- 3. "Her husband shall praise her" : marriage and missions -- 4. "Her children shall call her blessed" : modeling motherhood -- 5. "A cultivated and well-furnished mind" : education for "Oriental" women -- 6. "The healing of the nations" : women's medical mission in the "Orient" -- 7. "A modern uprising of women" : institutionalizing the women's missionary movement.

ISBN

0865548889 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

2005002526

OCLC

• ocm57652556
• SCSB-5177878

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries